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choward
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Joined: 08 Nov 2002
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 Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 3:41 pm Post subject: Split Portage & Programming |
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The Portage & Programming forum has become a mish mash of topics. Posts there range from obscure questions about the STL with gcc 3.2 to ebuild-X doesn't compile.
In my opinion, there should be two separate forums: Programming and Ebuild Support. Note that hacking on Portage would still fit in the Programming forum, but questions about why a particular ebuild is broken would not clutter up the discussion about programming.
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Craig Howard
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pizen
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Joined: 23 Jun 2002
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| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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| I think this would be a good idea. It might make it easier for those of us who wish to give or receive programming help to get what we need. It seems many of the portage questions said "this ebuild is borken" when that should be a bug filed over in bugzilla. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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I would prefer all portage related issues in one location. I'd send programming questions to Off The Wall.
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rac
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| Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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One of my main criteria for determining when it would be a good idea to split a forum is comparing its traffic with its neighbors. I think it would be ideal if all of the Assistance forums had roughly the same amount of traffic, and Portage and Programming is, by that standard, in pretty good shape. I can see the argument from a subject point of view, and we have to balance that concern with the general one of "too many forums", which used to be a big complaint.
In the meantime, programming questions should still feel at home in P&P. Personally, I would rather see requests for assistance stay in Assistance forums, rather than suggesting that they go in Off The Wall. Let's see what other people think.
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choward
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Nov 2002
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| Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 1:59 am Post subject: |
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| rac wrote: | | One of my main criteria for determining when it would be a good idea to split a forum is comparing its traffic with its neighbors. I think it would be ideal if all of the Assistance forums had roughly the same amount of traffic, and Portage and Programming is, by that standard, in pretty good shape. |
I disagree with that statement 110%. As an example, consider a setup similar to the Gentoo forums, but for a university math program. There are four forums: "Linear Algebra", "Group Theory and Basic Algebraic Manipulation", "Calculus" and "Stats." Now the traffic in each forum is roughly equal, but obviously "Group Theory" and "Basical Algebraic Manipulation" are _completely_ different topics, and even though the traffic on the two of them, combined, are equal to the traffic on the others, the content in the forum will frustrate the users of the forum trying to find relevant information. In the end, fewer people will participate.
Now I'm not giving this argument just to argue my point for P&P being split up, I just think generally, that your criteria for splitting forums is inappropriate. (Why not just have one huge forum covering everything? Or a round robin posting approach, where everything fifth post is put in the fifth forum. Either method would guarantee equal sized forums.)
| rac wrote: |
I can see the argument from a subject point of view, and we have to balance that concern with the general one of "too many forums", which used to be a big complaint. |
The forums should be used for discussion centered on a topic. Granted, if the topic is too narrow, a forum dries up and becomes useless. However, if the topic is too broad, the users of the forum become frustrated by the amount of irrelevant information that they must sift through and end up using other means of communication.
| rac wrote: | | In the meantime, programming questions should still feel at home in P&P. Personally, I would rather see requests for assistance stay in Assistance forums, rather than suggesting that they go in Off The Wall. Let's see what other people think. |
If that's the intention, then I think it should be documented on the forum front page.
I hope I've not come across too harshly here. The Gentoo forums are _very_ helpful, friendly and ego-free (gasp!). Definately a rarity in the Linux world. Keep up the outstanding work!
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Craig Howard
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rac
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Joined: 30 May 2002
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| Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 3:27 am Post subject: |
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| choward wrote: | | rac wrote: | | One of my main criteria for determining when it would be a good idea to split a forum is comparing its traffic with its neighbors. I think it would be ideal if all of the Assistance forums had roughly the same amount of traffic, and Portage and Programming is, by that standard, in pretty good shape. |
I disagree with that statement 110%. As an example, consider a setup similar to the Gentoo forums, but for a university math program. There are four forums: "Linear Algebra", "Group Theory and Basic Algebraic Manipulation", "Calculus" and "Stats." Now the traffic in each forum is roughly equal, but obviously "Group Theory" and "Basical Algebraic Manipulation" are _completely_ different topics, and even though the traffic on the two of them, combined, are equal to the traffic on the others, the content in the forum will frustrate the users of the forum trying to find relevant information. In the end, fewer people will participate. |
The creation of the current Portage and Programming forum owes itself largely to the campaign that started in Portage Forum (historical note if some things sound strange: neither kanuslupus nor I were moderators at this time). At that time, there was a Programming forum. Questions of the type of "Why is Portage doing this?" and "I can't get this ebuild to merge correctly. Why?" were overwhelming All Things Gentoo (what is now Other Things Gentoo).
At the time of the last reorganization, there was a pretty broad consensus that there were too many forums. So, reducing the total number of forums was a goal that was always in the back of everybody's thought process as we shuffled things around. With that in mind, it was argued that of the existing forums, the people that hung out in the Programming forum were probably the best suited to figure out why things weren't compiling, read autoconf failures and compiler errors, and debug things within the Portage internals.
To borrow your analogy, let's assume that classroom space is at a premium, and the university would have to spend money that could otherwise be used to provide low-cost textbooks to students on extra classrooms if it had to have five classes going on simultaneously. It would be a judgement call as to which two to put together.
| Quote: | | Now I'm not giving this argument just to argue my point for P&P being split up, I just think generally, that your criteria for splitting forums is inappropriate. (Why not just have one huge forum covering everything? Or a round robin posting approach, where everything fifth post is put in the fifth forum. Either method would guarantee equal sized forums.) |
Limiting the scope to just the Assistance forums, I think it's important to try to keep two goals in mind: make it easy for people to know where to post their question (which improves efficiency and also makes moderation easier), and make it easy for people who want to give back and answer questions to find questions they are interested in.
In the specific case of P&P, I have been of the opinion that, on the whole, the same people are more likely to be able to and interested in answering both these types of questions.
When I was talking about post volume, I was referring to the fact that if we were to add another Assistance forum (and "spend the money on the classroom", as it would increase the difficulties associated with "too many forums"), the amount of traffic in Desktop Environments worries me more than Portage & Programming.
There comes a traffic point where if one can't reasonably keep up with the traffic on a forum, people stop reading it consistently. This was a major concern with the old All Things Gentoo. Trying to spread the traffic out is also partially an attempt to keep all the forums under this traffic threshold.
So I'm not advocating arbitrary traffic equalization, but rather suggesting it as a useful heuristic for determining when we have a wasteful allocation of, for lack of a better term, forumspace.
| Quote: | | rac wrote: | | In the meantime, programming questions should still feel at home in P&P. Personally, I would rather see requests for assistance stay in Assistance forums, rather than suggesting that they go in Off The Wall. Let's see what other people think. |
If that's the intention, then I think it should be documented on the forum front page. |
Sorry, but which intention were you referring to? If it's the "requests for help go in Assistance forums, discussion topics go in Discussion forums", I thought that that point was conveyed by the various forum descriptions. If it's not clear, though, thanks for the suggestion. Maybe it would be a good idea to add something to the posting guidelines.
| Quote: | | I hope I've not come across too harshly here. |
Not at all. We appreciate all constructive feedback. I just want to make sure that some of the other concerns that need to be factored into the equation don't get left out. Truthfully, I have been somewhat worried about the lack of traffic in this feedback forum. I certainly hope people do not have the impression that anybody is cloistering themselves in an ivory tower here.
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choward
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Joined: 08 Nov 2002
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| Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 4:59 am Post subject: |
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Excellent response, thanks. That is a perfectly valid argument. As usual, a different perspective made me change my opinon.
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Craig Howard
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masseya
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Joined: 17 Apr 2002
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| Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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Seperate forum for programming? is a recent duplicate of this thread. Please read it as there is a lot of newer information than the very old info posted here. Also, please be sure to look at the dates on the above posts both to get perspective on the history of the forum as well as to guide your possible thoughts on this topic.
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Vishruth
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2003 9:15 am Post subject: |
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Ok, if there isn't going to be a seperate forum for programming, the least that could be done is to rename P&P to just "Portage". Remove the programming part altogether. It's quite useless anyway. I remember posting a thread about php once and it got drowned in the sea of portage threads within no time at all. Once it's off of page one, it doesn't get noticed easily and so it just dies.
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goanuj
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| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 8:43 am Post subject: agreed |
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| Just change it to portage and programmers will have to ask their questions elsewhere. |
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pjp
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| Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:31 am Post subject: |
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| rac also wrote: | There are two reasons they're together: - The same people tend to be able to answer both types of questions
- Try to minimize the number of forums to avoid having an overly cluttered front page
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Braempje
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| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 8:34 am Post subject: |
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| Vishruth wrote: | | Ok, if there isn't going to be a seperate forum for programming, the least that could be done is to rename P&P to just "Portage". Remove the programming part altogether. It's quite useless anyway. I remember posting a thread about php once and it got drowned in the sea of portage threads within no time at all. Once it's off of page one, it doesn't get noticed easily and so it just dies. |
I completely agree.
I don't like the current situation either: in Portage and programming it's only Portage, and in off the wall you're referred to Portage and programming...
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mtj
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Joined: 01 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 9:22 am Post subject: |
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| Braempje wrote: | | Vishruth wrote: | | Ok, if there isn't going to be a seperate forum for programming, the least that could be done is to rename P&P to just "Portage". Remove the programming part altogether. It's quite useless anyway. I remember posting a thread about php once and it got drowned in the sea of portage threads within no time at all. Once it's off of page one, it doesn't get noticed easily and so it just dies. |
I completely agree.
I don't like the current situation either: in Portage and programming it's only Portage, and in off the wall you're referred to Portage and programming... |
It's not "just portage", it is programming as well (which is more or less the consensus all through this thread.) OK, progamming questions are a lot less in frequency and maybe here and there a question "drowns" in the sheer volume (which is definitely not a question of the referenced question's programming topic, but of sheer bad luck - this may happen to portage questions as well.)
So please don't jump to conclusions, just because a new poster with whopping 4 posts under his belt misunderstood the forum topic in this thread.
Though personally I'd still like to see a dedicated programming forum...  |
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Braempje
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| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| mtj wrote: | So please don't jump to conclusions, just because a new poster with whopping 4 posts under his belt misunderstood the forum topic in this thread.
Though personally I'd still like to see a dedicated programming forum... |
Hey that's my thread  Honestly: I posted this message (at least the one moved into duplicates) before I read that post.
Anyway, I agree with the arguments, it'll probably be unfeasible to split.
Thanks for the explanation everyone!
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Bowyakka
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| Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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I still think this stuff should be splitup, the volume of portage messages drown out the programming messages and some of the people who give programming advice are really good.
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aja
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:13 pm Post subject: Split Portage and Programming Into Two Fora? |
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I spend a fair bit of time in P&P, and it occurs to me that threads there are of two distinct flavours: emerge problems, and actual programming discussion (with the very occaisional "how do I get my custom ebuild to work" thread that sort of spans the two).
It seems to me that those two flavours should be split into two: A "Portage" forum for problems with portage and ebuilds and a "Programming" forum for more general questions regarding programming problems, languages, syntax, algorithms, etc.
[Edit: Corrected typo in 'syntax'. The irony.]
Edit: Merged to this thread. --Maedhros |
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aja
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| Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2005 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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Doh!
Should have searched more carefully before posting. Thanks for the move. Looks like the issue has been raised and answered before.
I will add that P&P now seems to be the largest (but not by a lot) support forum. And that the front page is now quite a bit bigger - so I think some of the arguments above have been mooted or at least partially refuted.
Worth opening the question up again? |
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deprecated
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| Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, I'm resurrecting a thread for its third run apparently, but I'd like to add my vote for a seperate Programming thread.
I've recently discovered a love for answering programming questions on a couple different boards, but finding general programming related questions on the Gentoo forums is next to impossible. If giving programming its own space isn't happening, lets try to get something else going, I think the current situation could possibly be hurting the possibility of a forum-based Gentoo independant programming community, which would be really neat if it could happen.
Anyways, just my thoughts.
--Dep
Edit: Forgot to mention that I like and support the points in choward's second post in this thread. Thanks! |
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oggialli
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:41 pm Post subject: State of this forum? |
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Can't help thinking how far has the contents of this forum shifted (or always been) from its description - most of the threads should actually be filed as bugs in http://bugs.gentoo.org instead of ending up here as clutter. And there is almost... or precisely, nothing about PROGRAMMING. Personally, I'd love to help (and I think many others would too) my fellow gentooers with their C/C++ woes or discuss own projects etc.
Any opinions on should the forum be perhaps split or the "Programming" part removed entirely from the description ?
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tomk
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oggialli
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| Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm, thanks, didn't notice this one from so far away
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rutski89
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| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:06 am Post subject: This forum is off topic. |
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It would really be nice to see this forum acutally used for programming disuction, not "I can't emerger glibc" kind of discussion. I expected this place to be more like comp.lang.c, or comp.lang.perl, or comp.lang.anything, but that's not what its turning out to be.
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omp
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| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:09 am Post subject: |
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This should be in Gentoo Forums Feedback. 
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TheDebugger
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| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:14 am Post subject: Re: This forum is off topic. |
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| rutski89 wrote: | | It would really be nice to see this forum acutally used for programming disuction, not "I can't emerger glibc" kind of discussion. I expected this place to be more like comp.lang.c, or comp.lang.perl, or comp.lang.anything, but that's not what its turning out to be. |
Although I'm still a N00b, I second that. This specific forum should be split into someting like "Portage Problems" and "Programming Problems" ... |
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Vanquirius
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| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:28 am Post subject: |
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And this thread, for one, belongs in Gentoo Forums Feedback. I like the splitting idea.
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